“Can’t be a doubt about it. See that scar like a cross? Couldn’t well miss that, could I? He’s the one all right. And, though I could never prove it, I’d swear he was the one who struck me from the dark.
“And, by all that’s good!” Johnny sprang to his feet. “I’ll get that man! See if I don’t! No man can strike me from the shadows and get away with it!”
“Well, I guess that makes your friend Johnny here one of us. That right, Drew?” the Captain rumbled.
Drew Lane nodded his head.
“Sit down, son,” said the Captain. “I’ll tell you what those pictures mean. Drew here and Tom Howe carry those pictures with them always. So does Joyce, though I don’t know quite where—in her stocking perhaps.”
Joyce smiled.
“We joke at times,” the Captain went on, “but this affair is no joke. Those men are our assignment. They are to be our assignment until every man of them is behind bars or in his grave. You may join us if you will.”
“I will.” Johnny’s voice was low.
The Captain extended his hand as a solemn pledge.
“You have a right to know,” he went on, “just what men you are after, and what they have done.
“They are hardened criminals, every one, public enemies of the worst sort. A little more than a month ago they sealed their fate—they killed a policeman, the finest copper that ever walked a beat.”
For a time the Captain stared at the fire. “My boy,” he said at last, in a different voice, “I’m going to take you with me somewhere, sometime. The finest little family you ever saw!” he rumbled low as if talking to himself.
Then, with a sudden start, he repeated, “They killed a policeman. Of course a policeman’s no better than any other man. But with us there’s an unwritten law that no officer shall go unavenged.
“That wasn’t all they did, this unholy five. They went to a banker’s home at midnight and terrorized his family until morning. Man’s wife was in ill health. But of course—” The Captain’s voice rumbled with scorn and hate. “Of course you couldn’t expect these robbers to take note of a little thing like that! What do they care for women and children?
“When morning came they took the man to his bank. They compelled him to open the vault. They took the bank’s securities, more than two hundred thousand dollars worth. Then, of course, they went away.
“By some oversight, the bank’s insurance had been allowed to lapse. Because of this heavy loss the bank was forced to close its doors. It was a working man’s bank. Thousands of common folks lost their savings. These five men—no doubt they had a fine time with the currency they took!
“But the bonds—” His voice rose again. “The bonds are hot. We’ve kept them hot. They dare not sell them. And we’ll get them back yet, see if we don’t!
“And those are the men we’re after!” he added a moment later. “Are you still with us?”
“More than ever!” Johnny’s voice was husky.
Once again the Captain offered his hand. “You’re a lad after my own heart,” he rumbled. “I’ve two places I want to show you, and I’m sure you’ll like them both.”
Grace Krowl, the girl from Kansas, found plenty of things to occupy her thoughts as she sank into a chair in one of the two small rooms allotted to her on the upper floor of her uncle’s store in Chicago.
“A store in Chicago.” She laughed low. Her uncle’s store in Chicago. What dreams had she not dreamed of this store? Chicago was a grand city. His store must be a grand place. She had of late pictured it as a six-story building; pure fancy, for he had never written about its size or importance. In fact, he had not written at all until she had written first and asked for a position as clerk in his store. He had been married to her mother’s sister. The sister was dead.
When Grace had needed work badly she had written, and he had replied briefly: “I can give you work at fifteen dollars per week and board.”
So here she was. And her uncle’s store was little more than a hole in the wall. No counters, no glass cases. Things piled in heaps, and all secondhand; glass dishes here, bed covers there, dresses, sheets, towels, everything. And in the corner, like so many skeletons, a great pile of bruised, battered and empty trunks.
“He buys trunks, other people’s trunks.” She shuddered afresh.
Then the words of her new-found friend of the bookstore came to her. “Diamonds, stocks and bonds.” These were dreams. “But rare old books, wonderful bits of Irish lace, why not?” Perhaps, after all, she could drive away the ache that came in her throat at the thought that someone who truly loved these things had lost them because they were poor.
She thought of her own trunk and laughed aloud. What a sight that must have been—she snatching at her prized possessions and those other women poking her and banging her on the head!
Of course it had all been a mistake. She had come to Chicago by bus and had sent on her trunk by express. The van that went for her trunk had also picked up a half dozen others which her uncle had bought at auction. The trunks had become mixed. The lock had been pried off her own and the contents were being sold when she arrived. Everything had been retrieved except a pearl-backed brush she prized and a hideous vase she abhorred.
“That did not turn out so badly,” she assured herself. “Perhaps everything will come along quite as well.” And yet, as she took a handful of silver coins and one paper dollar from her purse and added them up, her face was very sober. She was a long way from home, and there could be no retreat.
The place she was to call home was above the store. Too tired and preoccupied to notice at first, she received a shock when she at last became conscious of her surroundings. The room in which she sat was a tiny parlor, all her own. Off from that was a bedroom. Everything—furniture, rugs, decorations,—was in exquisite taste and perfect harmony.
“Contrast!” she exclaimed. “Who could ask for greater contrast? Rags below, and this above!” She stared in speechless surprise.
One thing astonished her. Opposite the window in the parlor was an oval, concave mirror, like an old-fashioned light reflector. It was some two feet across.
“I wonder why it is here,” she murmured. She was to wonder more as the days passed.
When she had prepared herself for the night’s rest, she snapped out the light, then stood for a brief time at the open window looking out into the night. She was on the second floor of her uncle’s small building. Before her were the low, flat roofs of some one-story shacks. Looking far beyond these, she saw squares of light against the night sky. These she knew were lighted windows of distant skyscrapers. There were thousands of these windows.
“What can they all do at night?” she asked herself. “Struggling to make money, to get on, to keep their families housed and fed,” the answer came to her. Then, strangely enough, her mind carried her back over the trail that had brought her to this city. It had been an interesting adventure, that long bus ride. Six of the passengers, including herself, had ridden hundreds of miles together. They had become like a little community.
“It was as if these were pioneer days,” she told herself now. “As if we were journeying in covered wagons in a strange new land.” One of these long distance passengers, as you will know, had been a young man. In his golf knickers and soft, gray cap, he had seemed a college boy. But he was not. “Out of college and at work,” was the way he had expressed it.
“What work do you do?” she had asked.
He had hesitated before replying. Then his answer had been vague. “Oh, I just look after people.”
“Look after people?”
“Lots of people. All sorts.” A queer smile had played about the corners of his mouth.
She had not pressed the question further. But now, standing there looking out into his city at night, she whispered, “His name was Drew Lane. Wonder if I’ll ever see him again? I hope so. He seemed a nice boy, and I should love to know how he looks after ‘lots of people—all sorts.’”
She looked again at the many lighted windows. Suddenly those who toiled there seemed very near to her. She found a strange comfort in this.
“I, too, must do my best,” she told herself. “God help me to be wise and strong, helpful to others and kind to all!” she prayed as she gave herself over to sleep.
She was wakened at dawn by a whisper. At first, so closely did dream life blend with the life of day, it seemed natural that she should be listening to this whisper. When she had come into full consciousness she sprang out of bed with a start.
“Good morning!” The words came in slowly, a distinct whisper. “We hope you are happy this morning. Cheerio! That’s the word!”
“When you have dressed,” the whisper continued, “won’t you just step out into the little parlor and take a seat by the table? It will be good to have a look at your shining face.”
“Someone in my little parlor! I don’t like it. And that whisper!”
She dressed hurriedly, then stepped through the door. What sort of person had she expected to see? Probably she could not have told. What she did see was an empty room.
Greatly astonished, hardly knowing why she obeyed the whispered orders, she took a seat by the table. Instantly the whisper began once more:
“Ah! There you are! I am talking to you over a beam of light. I am a mile away. I have interesting things to tell you. You are going to aid me.”
For a brief space of time the whisper ended. The girl’s mind was in a whirl. “Talking down a beam of light!” she thought. “What nonsense! Going to aid that whisperer?” Here surely was some strange mystery.
For some time Grace Krowl remained at her small table awaiting some further message from the mysterious whisperer. No further message came. Had this whisper told the truth? Was he a mile away? She could not believe it.
On descending to the floor below, she found her strange uncle prepared to leave his odd store.
“Today I go to an auction,” he said to her with a smile. “Today there is nothing to unpack. Not many people will come. They come only when there are trunks. Tomorrow there will be trunks, perhaps many trunks.”
“Trunks,” Grace thought with an involuntary shudder.
“Today,” her uncle went on, “Margot will tend store.” He nodded toward an aged woman bending over a pile of soiled garments. “Today you are free. You may make yourself at home in your new place.”
All that day in her little parlor, Grace had one ear open for the Whisperer. She heard nothing. He spoke, apparently, only at dawn. The day was, for her, quite uneventful.
The same could not be said for our young friend Johnny. Late that day, with a narrow bandage still about his head, he returned to the “House of Magic.” And, almost at once, adventure struck him squarely between the eyes.
“You are just in time!” Felix, the inventor’s son, greeted him. “I have not tried that new thing. We will begin at dusk, in an hour or two in a captive balloon,—”
“A captive balloon!” Johnny felt a thrill course up his spine.
“On the Fair grounds,” Felix added. “There is one over there. The grounds are deserted. I have permission to use the balloon. I have had it inflated. No one will bother us there.”
It is better sometimes to do things where there are crowds. Felix was to learn this. There is safety in numbers.
At the gate of the deserted Fair grounds Felix presented his pass. They were admitted.
“Sent the equipment over in a small truck,” he explained to Johnny. “Rather heavy.”
“What equipment?” The words were on Johnny’s tongue. He did not say them. Just in time he recollected that he was to look, listen, help all he could and not ask questions. “I’ll be told all I need to know in good time,” he assured himself. Had he but known it, that night he was to need wisdom not written in any book.
The streets they were passing through now were strange. The falling darkness gave to everything an air of mystery. Here some great man-made dragon opened its mouth as if to swallow them, there a tattered sign fluttered and cracked in the wind. “The great Century of Progress!” Johnny whispered. “Here thousands swarmed along the Midway. Now all is still. Now—
“What was that?” He stopped dead in his tracks. Had he caught the sound of scurrying feet? Yes, he was sure of it. And there, well defined against a wall, were the shadows of two half crouching figures. One was tall, the other short. Johnny felt a chill run up his spine.
Felix apparently had seen nothing, heard nothing. He had gone plodding stolidly on into the gathering darkness; was at this moment all but lost from sight.
With a little cry of consternation, Johnny sprang after him.
By the time he caught up to him they were at the spot where the balloon was kept.
“We just release this clutch when we are ready to go up,” Felix explained, “then up we go. There is a time arrangement that will set the electrically operated drum, winding us back down again in two hours. We only go up about three hundred feet. Cable holds us. Quite safe tonight, no wind to speak of.”
Johnny thought this a rather strange arrangement. “No guard here?” he asked.
“No need. No one’s allowed in the grounds unless they have a pass. Climb in. All set.”
Johnny did climb in, and up they went.
Johnny had been in the air many times. For all that, he experienced a strange sense of insecurity as they rose a hundred, two hundred, three hundred feet into the murky air of night. “Pooh!” he exclaimed in a low breath. “It is nothing!”
That he might throw off this feeling of dread, he busied himself with other thoughts. His gaze swept the city where lights were gleaming. “Where,” he thought, “are Drew and Tom? Hunting pickpockets perhaps. And where is Captain Burns? I’m going to like him, I’m sure. He is so solid and real; but jovial for all that. He said he’d take me places. What places? I wonder. Dangerous places? He said—”
His thoughts were broken in upon by Felix’s voice:
“Here we are at the top. Now for the test.”
The young inventor flashed on a powerful searchlight. “All I have to do is to connect this through a switch, aim my light at a window in our house, take up this microphone and say, ‘Hello father!’ He hears me and no one else in the world can. He—
“What!” he exclaimed in consternation. “The current is off. Someone cut the light cable!”
“More than that!” Johnny’s tone was sober. He was looking over the side of the balloon basket in which they rode. “The cable that holds us has been cut! We’re drifting!”
“You’re right!” Consternation sounded in the older boy’s voice. “We’re going out into the night, over black waters. And there is no ballast!”
“They got us, those two!” Johnny muttered.
“What two?” Felix demanded.
“I saw them on the grounds, a tall one and a short one—anyway I saw their shadows. Should have told you.”
“Oh!” Felix groaned. “Wonder what we’ve done to them. But they haven’t got us—not yet!” There was courage and high resolve in Felix Van Loon’s tone. “We’ll beat them yet. You’ll see!”
Would they? Johnny silently wondered.
Strangely enough, at that moment thoughts not related at all to this adventure passed through his mind. He was once more in that place of mystery, the professor’s house, in the hallway seeing eyes in the wall, shuddering at sight of his own skeleton. “How could all that have happened?” he asked himself.
Johnny had known a thrill or two, but none quite like drifting through the night in a balloon that was not meant for drifting.
“Not an ounce of ballast!” Felix groaned. “And the night so dark we may plunge without a moment’s notice into those cold, black waters. And then—oh well, what’s the good of thinking about that?”
There truly was no use at all of thinking about it. If worse came to worst and they were able to tell the moment of great danger, they might throw his instruments and the searchlight over to lighten the balloon.
“All this equipment,” Felix moaned, “cost plenty of money!”
In spite of their predicament, Johnny found himself wondering about that equipment and what they had been about to do.
For a time Johnny was silent. Then of a sudden he exclaimed, “Felix, we are drifting northeast! That means we’ll be over the lake for hours. If the wind rises, if a strong gust drags us down, or if the gas bag leaks and we are plunged into the lake we are lost! A three hundred foot cable hangs beneath this balloon. It is weighting us down. Suppose we could cut it away?”
“It’s an idea!” Felix was all alert. “But it hangs from below. How’ll you reach it?”
“Here’s a rope. I’ll go over the side. You hang on to the rope.”
“That,” said Felix slowly, “will be taking a long chance.”
“Whole thing’s a chance.” Johnny was tying a loop in the rope. “Now I’ll put a foot in this loop, hold to the rope with one hand and work with the other. Flashlight will tell me all I need to know. Can hold the light in my teeth.”
“You should be in a circus.” Felix laughed. For all that, he made the other end of the rope fast, then prepared to lower his companion.
As he climbed up and over, Johnny felt his heart miss a beat. It was strange, this crawling out into space. All was dark below. Was the water a hundred or a thousand feet down? He could not tell. The majestic Lindbergh light swept the sky, but its rays did not touch them.
“If only it did,” he murmured, “someone would see us.”
Strangely enough, at this very moment the professor’s golden-haired daughter, Beth, was making strenuous efforts to bring that very thing to pass, to get one of those eyes of the night, a powerful searchlight, focussed upon the runaway balloon.
Her father, sensing that something had gone wrong with the balloon, had hurried her away to the spot from which the balloon had risen. Arrived there after a wild taxi ride, she had discovered on the instant what had happened.
“Some—someone cut the cable with an electric torch!” In vain her eyes searched the sky for the balloon. She was about to hurry away when a hand gripped her arm.
“Where would you go?”
“Why! I—”
Taking one look at the man, she sent forth an involuntary scream. She had seen that man before. He carried a knife in his sleeve. She was terribly afraid.
Her scream had electrifying results. A huge bulk of a youth with tangled red hair emerged from somewhere.
“Here you!” he growled, “Let her go!”
Releasing the girl, the small dark man sprang at her protector.
“Look out!” the girl screamed. “He—he has a knife!”
Her warning was not needed. The little man’s knife went coursing through the air. Next instant the little man followed it into the dark. The big fellow’s fists had done all this.
“Now, sister,” the young giant turned to Beth, “where was it you wanted to go?”
“The—the Skidmore Building.”
“The Skidmore? O.K.”
Fairly picking her up, he rushed her to the taxi that was waiting for her, then climbed in beside her. “Skidmore Building. Make it snappy!”
Once in the taxi and speeding away, Beth was able to collect her thoughts. There was, at the top of the tall Skidmore Building, a searchlight. This was not always in operation, but was held in readiness for any emergency either on the water or in the air. If only she could get that light searching the air for the runaway balloon something, she felt sure, could be done about it.
The taxi came to a sudden jarring halt.
“Here you are!”
“Here.” She dropped a half dollar in the taxi driver’s hand. At the same instant something was pressed into the palm of her left hand. She looked up. Her powerful young protector was gone. In her hand was a card.
A moment later as she shot toward the stars in an elevator she looked at that card and smiled.
“Gunderson Shotts, 22 Diversey Way” it read. And in the lower right hand corner, “Everybody’s Business.”
She smiled in spite of herself as she murmured, “Gunderson Shotts, Everybody’s Business. What a strange calling!”
* * * * * * * *
At that same moment Johnny was going over the side into the dark. It was strange, this adventure. “Must be careful,” he told himself. And indeed he must. Dark waters awaited him. A drop from that height would probably kill or at least maim him.
“No chance,” he murmured.
The bright lights of the city called to him from afar. He had seen much of that bright and terrible city; had meant to see much more. “Must see it all,” he told himself.
“But now I must forget it,” he resolved.
And surely he must, for now he was beneath the basket. The tiny finger of light from his electric torch shot about here and there.
Steadying its motion, directing it toward the end of the cable, he began studying the problem at hand.
And then—something happened. Did his hand slip? Did the noose about his foot give away? He will never know. Nor will he forget that instant when his flashlight, slipping from his chattering teeth, shot downward and he, by the merest chance, escaped following it.
How it happened he will never be able to tell. This much he knew: he hung there in all that blackness supporting his weight by one desperately gripping hand.
Somewhere below was the noose that should offer him footing. Somewhere far, far below were black waters waiting. And through his mind there flashed a thousand pictures of the bright and beautiful world he might, in ten seconds’ time, leave behind.
All this in the space of a split second, then groping madly, he found the rope with his other hand. After that began the heart-breaking task of groping in the dark with his foot for the dangling rope loop, while the muscles in his arms became burning bands of fire.
“I must win!” he whispered. “I must!”
“Johnny! Johnny Thompson!” came from above. “What has happened?”
“Don’t know. I—I’m dangling. Dra—draw me up if you can.”
Came a sudden tug on the rope that all but tore the rope from his grip. “No! No! Wait!”
Once again he sought that noose with his toe.
* * * * * * * *
As for Beth, she had gone shooting up in that express elevator in the Skidmore Building.
Like a rubber ball she bounded from the car, then raced for a cubby-hole in a corner where two men were standing.
“The balloon!” she exclaimed. “The captive balloon! It’s loose, drifting! You must find it with your light!”
“What’s that?” one man demanded sharply. “Impossible! There’s no gale. That cable couldn’t break!”
“It’s loose! Drifting!” the girl insisted. “They cut the cable, someone cut it. My brother and another boy are in the balloon. You must save them.”
One man glanced at the other. “All right, we better try it, Ben!”
At that a long finger of white light began feeling its way through the blackness that is sky above Lake Michigan on a cloudy night.
Johnny, unable to find the loop in the rope, feeling his strength unequal to a climb hand over hand, felt the muscles of his arms weaken until all seemed lost.
And then, as if some miracle had been done, night turned into day. The powerful light had reached him only for a second, but that was enough. His keen eye had caught the loop in the rope. It was by his knee. A sudden fling and his knee was resting in that loop.
“All—all right now!” he called. “Try to pull me up.”
And at that the gleam of that powerful searchlight returned to rest on the spot of air in which the runaway balloon hung.
“I’ll step over and call the sausage balloon, Ben,” one of the men in the great steel tower said to the other as Beth, at sight of the balloon still drifting high, began breathing more easily. “They’ll have to go to the rescue.”
One more fierce struggle and Johnny tumbled over the side into the balloon’s basket.
“It—it’s put on with steel rings,” he panted.
“It—what is?” Felix stared.
“The cable. What did you think?” Johnny laughed in spite of himself. “That’s what I went over to see about.”
“Yes,” Felix grinned. “But now they’ve found us. All the honest people in that great city will want to save us. Isn’t it wonderful when you think of it?” he marveled. “So many good people in the world! So many willing to give a fellow a lift when he’s in trouble. If only we could all pull together all the time, what a world this would be!”
After that, each occupied with his own thoughts, they drifted on into the night.
A half hour later a dark bulk came stealing toward them. This was a small dirigible balloon owned by an advertising firm. Soon they were alongside. Instruments were taken aboard, the runaway balloon deflated, then they went gliding back toward the city of a million lights.
“Should have had this old sausage in the beginning,” Felix grumbled. “Will next time perhaps.”
Johnny wondered if he would be invited to participate in that next endeavor and, if so, what he would learn.
In due time they were back on good solid earth. But the day, for Johnny, was not yet over.
“Say!” Felix exclaimed as they boarded a car bound for home. “Wonder how it happened that searchlight fellow was looking for us.”
“Somebody told him,” Johnny suggested.
“Yes, and I know who!” The young inventor’s face fairly shone. “It was Beth; couldn’t have been anyone else. Fellow without a sister is just square out of luck, that’s all. The way she gets me out of things! Say, man! It’s great!”
A half hour later, over cups of steaming chocolate produced, as before, by the mysterious “Eye,” Beth told her story.
“Gunderson Shotts,” Felix murmured, examining the card Beth handed him. “‘Everybody’s Business.’ Suppose that means he tends to everybody’s business?”
“Got quite a job on his hands,” Johnny laughed.
“He’s big enough to take a huge load of it on his shoulders.” Beth was staring into space.
“Have to look him up and thank him,” Felix drawled. Already the events of the day were fading from his memory. He was dreaming of some strange new contraption that might startle the world.
“You’ll stay with us tonight.” Roused from his revery, he turned to Johnny.
“Why I—”
“Sure, sure you will. Show you the room right away. It’s on the third floor; a little strange, you may find it, but comfortable, extra fine, I’d say.” Felix favored him with a smile.
The room they entered a few moments later was strange in two particulars. It was extremely tall. Johnny thought it must be fully twenty feet to the ceiling. “Queer way to build a room,” was his mental comment. Like other rooms in the house, it was illuminated to the deepest corners; yet there were no lamps anywhere. “Odd place, this,” he thought. Yet Felix had warned him. He had been given ample opportunity to say, “I don’t like the looks of it.” Now he shrugged his shoulders and asked no questions; that was Johnny’s way.
“Light begins to fade in twenty minutes,” was Felix’s only comment as he left the room.
“Light begins to fade,” Johnny grinned when the door had been closed. “Sure is a queer way to put it.”
Twenty minutes later he began to realize that the strange boy had spoken the exact truth. The light did begin to fade. At first the change was almost imperceptible, a mere deepening of shadows in remote corners. Then, little by little, the pictures that hung low on those tall walls began to fade. The windows too, short, low windows, too short, Johnny thought, for so tall a room, began letting in light about the shades, a very little light, but light all the same.
Breaking the spell that had settled upon his drowsy senses, Johnny sprang to his feet, threw off his clothes, dragged on his sleeping garments, then crept beneath the covers of a most comfortable bed.
“Light is fading,” he murmured. He recalled the lights on the stage of the opera house. They had not blinked on and off. They faded like the coming of darkness on the broad prairies. “Sort of nice, I think,” he murmured sleepily. “More natural. Like—like—”
Well, after all, what did it matter what it was like. He had fallen asleep.
How long we have slept we are seldom able to tell. At times an hour seems a whole night, at others four hours is but a dozen ticks of the clock. Johnny slept. He awoke. And at once his senses were conscious of some change going on in his room. He was seized with a foreboding of impending catastrophe.
At first he was at a complete loss to know what this change was. There was the room. The low windows still admitted streaks of light. The chairs, his bed, the very low chest of drawers were in their accustomed places.
“And yet—” He ran a hand across his eyes as if to clear his vision. And then like a flash it came to him. That exceedingly tall room was not so tall now—or was it?
“Impossible! How absurd!” He sat up, determined to waken himself from a bad dream.
But the thing was no dream. The ceiling was lower, fully five feet lower. And—horror of horrors!—it was still moving downward, lower, lower, still lower.
There was not the slightest sound, yet the boy seemed to feel the breath of moving air on his face.
Too astonished and frightened to move, he sat there while that ceiling marched down over the pattern of a quite futuristic wall-paper.
When at last questions formed themselves in his fear-frozen brain they were, “How far will it come? Will the posts of my bed arrest it? If the bed crashes under the weight, what then?”
While he was revolving these questions in his mind and wondering in a vague sort of way what chance he had of escaping from one of those third story windows, he noted with a start that the ceiling had ceased moving. It was as if its desire to hide great stretches of wall paper had, for the time at least, been satisfied.